


Beck'ning Shadows Dire

by Culumacilinte



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:56:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Culumacilinte/pseuds/Culumacilinte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men's names.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beck'ning Shadows Dire

**Author's Note:**

> Mrs. Coulter's daemon is given the name Ozymandias in the BBC radio drama of the trilogy, and I've stuck to that name here.
> 
> Also, my eternal thanks to my lovely slapdash beta-reader, earlwyn.
> 
> Written for Yuletide 2008

Marisa Lockhart kneels under the apse of the chapel, staring up at the painted mural of the Passion on the concave curve of the wall. It's dark and quiet, and the figure of Christ in his suffering is thrown into strange, striated shadow, but Marisa likes it like that. She shouldn't be here- not up here, beyond the altar- women aren't allowed. But the chapel's empty, so here she sits. As close as she can possibly get to that painting, as if, sitting beneath it, the blood from Christ's wounds might touch her somehow. She doesn't say anything- to speak would spoil the divine silence- but in her head, she's running through the old familiar lines of scripture. Not praying so much as reflecting. God's here with her, she knows it; and in the long, cold church, that's comfort.

Beside her, Ozymandias is a tiny green beetle, and he's spitefully gnawing a hole in the carven wood of the nearby altar servers' bench. Marisa frowns, and reaches out to brush him away; ignoring him in favour of inspecting the damage he's done as he unfolds into a brightly coloured bird, a flycatcher with a sharp beak and cruel little eyes.

`What'd you do that for?'

She speaks very softly, irritated at having to speak at all. The beautiful silence of the church shouldn't have to be interrupted. Ozymandias alights on the cold stone floor, claws clicking. `It's just a bench,' he says, and the little line between Marisa's brows deepens, her lips pouting in girlish disapproval. Ozymandias knows what she's thinking, of course, and he huffs and fluffs his feathers up and takes off, fluttering high into the arch of the apse. It's an obvious ploy to distract her from further argument, but it works, as it does every time. He's a flash of joyous orange and gold against the dim stone of the church, Christ's bright blood dulled by shadow, and something in her swells to see a part of herself up in the dusty air, so very near to the figure in the mural. His feathers almost brush the paintwork; it's as close to touching it as she'll ever get.

And for the moment, the disagreement is postponed. But it's still there, with her daemon flitting about as high as he can stretch himself, and Marisa with her shins pressed into cold, polished granite. She sees God in that- in the tiled floor and the tiny, unevenly bored hole in the wooden bench, in the figure of Christ on his cross looming above her- and ignores the fact that Ozymandias doesn't. She's young, and firm in her faith. Her daemon will come around in time.

He does.

And together they learn; they travel and read ancient scriptures and texts, and she writes, making a name for herself as a scholar and a woman of God, though there are no few who dislike her. She makes sin her study.

But then she meets Asriel Belacqua, many, many years later, when she's no longer Lockhart but Coulter, the wife of a preeminent politician, and Ozymandias is long settled in his beautiful, familiar form of a golden monkey.

And very suddenly, Marisa Coulter understands what her daemon saw, when he looked at a church and saw little more than stone and mortar and gilt. She pushed those thoughts away, then; heretical, blasphemous thoughts, the sinful notions that a daemon brings to a young girl. But she can't now. Asriel won't let her. He draws her, pulls her in and she half wants to hate him, but she can't manage it. He's full of scorn for her, for her world, her Church, her sin, and all she can do is love him. She loves him with a desperate, furious passion, and when she finds herself with child, she knows that it's his.

But she's never been a mother, so she gives up the child to the church, and doesn't see Lord Asriel for ten years.

When she next does, it's far North, under the cold of the Aurora. She locked him up, had him tried, ready to be excommunicated and then put to death, but of course none of it worked, because here he is now, and Marisa's in his arms because there's nowhere else she could ever be. Above her, the Aurora arches and crackles, and she can see the pinnacles and domes of a strange city in it; it's impossible, utterly impossible, but Asriel has made it true, and in this moment, he glows with power, with Dust and divinity and sin. Oh, and Marisa knows all those things, knows them well, and she can see them on and all about Asriel as she clings to him.

He's all there is. That's how she felt ten years ago, and that's why she'd had to abandon him, but she feels the same way now. Like she could follow him anywhere, fall down at his feet and worship him because nothing else existed worthy of such attentions. No God, no Church, only them. Only him.

And that's so terrifying, that she'd pull away if they weren't suddenly locked in a kiss. In a distant part of her brain, she can feel Ozymandias in the snow at their feet, swooning, whimpering in pleasure as Stelmaria's leopard claws dig into his skin. Not hard enough to puncture, but enough to _hurt_ , and the pain is exquisite. She almost wishes they would press that much harder, just _enough_ , and at that thought, Ozymandias turns on Asriel's daemon, sharp monkey-claws raking through the thick white fur. She can feel flesh give beneath his nails, can feel Stelmaria's blood welling up, and she tears herself away from the kiss, gasping.

 _As if the blood of Christ's wounds might touch her somehow_ , she remembers wildly, and finds herself shaken to be thinking nearly the same thing now, with blood on her daemon's claws.

`Come with me,' Asriel says, and Marisa can feel tears freezing on her cheeks. `Come with me,' he says again, forceful, demanding, and Marisa would give anything to say yes and accompany him into that golden otherworld. But she can't. The joy and the rush and the terror of that moment still linger in her veins, and she can't allow herself to experience that, ever again. She has her duty, her study, her mission; Asriel is something she cannot allow herself. The original sin that once touched her, will never leave.

She pulls away. Vaguely, she notices Ozymandias whimpering and straining, trying desperately to return to Lord Asriel and the snow leopard at his side. That beautiful, terrible part of her soul who wants the sin and cares nothing for the consequences. But he isn't everything she is, and she gathers him to her bosom and cradles him, her dear sweet self, as Asriel crosses the bridge, and leaves her alone. Marisa Coulter has never felt alone in her life. But now, looking up at the Aurora, she is.

So she plots and she plans, she steals her daughter away and clings at the life she knew, but nothing quite seems to work. She's alone now, and she thinks of the little girl Marisa Lockhart sitting in the church and reading those words- _My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?_ It meant nothing to her then, of course. A child, firmly convinced, unwavering in her faith. There was sin, and to balance it, God.

But Asriel has upended the scale, and now? Now, all she has is sin.

Dust plagues the world, bathing it in a rain of sin, and perhaps, perhaps if she can find the origin of that original sin, wipe it from existence, then perhaps she'll get her God back.

The last time she sees Asriel, they're both dying. The last time she sees Asriel, there is no God, and no sin, and he is no more than a man. Her fingers are buried in the feathers of an angel's wings, a mortal being just like her, and she gives her last, fuzzed thoughts to the knowledge of this. There's _nothing_. And that isn't terrifying any longer. She's finally found the truth so long sought.

Above and below them and all around them is Dust. Golden and shining in her daemon's fur and on the blood smeared over Asriel's skull, staining her fingertips.

And it isn't sin; it's just Light.


End file.
